Page 42 of The Scholar's Improper Wife

STOP.

This was Shen Yun-si. The Chancellor’s daughter. His best friend. And he was destroying her.

“Si-er.” The words scraped out. “I’m alright. Go to your room. Don’t. Don’t let anybody see that you’ve been here tonight.”

He forced himself up just enough to reach for the hairpin tangling them together. It came free. Her hair spilled loose across his pillows. Dark silk everywhere.

His breath stopped.

Only husbands were supposed to see their wives with hair unbound.

Yun-si looked up to see Ting-zhi staring at her hair with a dazed expression. His eyes were glazed, unfocused, but fixed on the dark strands now spilling across his pillows.

He was crying again. Did he know that? Fresh tears tracked down his face, catching the lamplight.

Her heart clenched. She’d only ever seen him cry once, when his mother died eight years ago. He’d stood rigid and dry-eyed through the funeral rites, but wept in his room after.

But now, tears fell freely. Because of her loose hair?

Heat crawled up her neck. Only married women unbound their hair in front of men. Only in the privacy of the marriage chamber. She knew this. Everyone knew this.

His hand still hovered near her face where he’d pulled the ornament free. Trembling. His whole body shook with the effort of holding himself up, holding himself back.

“Ting-zhi.” Her voice came out wrong. Too soft. Too uncertain. “Let me help you.”

“You can’t.” The words were harsh. Raw. He rolled away from her suddenly, putting the width of the bed between them. His back to her now, shoulders heaving with labored breath. “Leave.”

A command. Barely coherent, but desperate.

Yun-si didn’t go.

She sat up on the edge of the bed and watched his shaking back. The lamp threw long shadows across the room. Outside, crickets chirped. Somewhere distant, the sound of a night watchman’s drum.

“I’m not leaving you like this.”

Ting-zhi turned to looked at her and laugh a rugged laugh, then stabbed her hairpin into his left forearm.

Yun-si’s breath snagged in her throat. “What are you—”

“Pain is clearer than heat.” His jaw was set despite the tears still drying on his face. “Go. Now. Before I can’t ask you again.”

She couldn’t move. She stared at the blood tracking down his arm and her chest locked up entirely.

He pressed the tip in again and shouted at her. “GO!”

The door burst open.

Shen Yun-shan stood in the frame, travel cloak still on his shoulders, one hand braced against the doorpost. He had clearly been moving fast. His eyes swept the room in less than a heartbeat—the disordered bed, Yun-si’s hair unbound and tumbling loose, her disheveled clothes—

“Yun-si.” Yun-shan said firmly. “Come here.”

His expression didn’t change. That was the worst part. It simply went still the way a blade went still the moment before it struck.

She stood. Her legs felt strange. She crossed the room and her brother pulled her behind him, putting his body between her and Ting-zhi.

Ting-zhi loosened his tight grip on the hairpin, it dropped unto the bed, and fresh blood spurted from his wound.

Something shifted in Yun-shan’s expression. Still hard. But calculating now.